> Sorry to all Googlers here for being so blunt, and feel free to point out one or more examples from the last few years where Google has prioritized their users above quarterly / yearly profits.
No need to apologize =]
An example that comes to mind is the current focus on accessibility. I think from an objective financial/engineering perspective, it's much preferable to just ignore accessibility because it adds complexity and isn't used by the vast majority of users. However, providing access to everyone is the right thing to do.
Of course, I'm sure people will say this is just for marketing or something but in the end, how can one get around that?
I don't think Google is flawless. Far from it! But it's a huge company with way too many products so it's only natural there will be bad decisions and good ones, just as there are bad people as well as good people.
> Look to Chrome mobile, the one that they can force ram down the throat of > 50% of mobile users. Chrome mobile doesn't have addons because it doesn't compete.
I'm not sure I understand.. are you saying that Chrome mobile takes up a lot of RAM? Because if so I would agree with that, but isn't that precisely why extensions shouldn't be allowed? Implementing extensions would add an even greater burden and poorly written extensions would provide a bad user experience.
If anything I really wish we could strip Chrome down. I think people adopted Chrome early on because it was really light and personally I really feel like we let everyone down by letting it get so bloated.
I don't think stripping even more functionality from the already dumb Chrome on mobile is the answer. How about concentrating efforts on making it more performant instead of removing things? Firefox on Android shows it can be done.
To be honest I don't know too much about what's been added but I can only assume new functionality must account for the increased bloat.
I imagine it's support for things like "Chrome Apps" or more generally the desire to get websites to be able to do the same things as native apps. I suspect there's also the fact that Chrome has to support Chrome OS as well.
But I am new to Chrome OS so admittedly I am not too familiar on the history or background =]
Chrome OS was my thought as well. I'm not sure how much of that is included in Chrome itself, and how much is bundled separately as part of the OS though.
For some reason I thought Chrome Apps were deprecated. PWAs can do most of the same things today.
Ah I think you might be right! But to be totally honest, I really don't care for PWAs either.. Maybe I am just too old fashioned but I don't care for my web apps having offline functionality.
That being said, I am not familiar with the technology so this is very much an uninformed opinion!
> Sorry to all Googlers here for being so blunt, and feel free to point out one or more examples from the last few years where Google has prioritized their users above quarterly / yearly profits.
No need to apologize =]
An example that comes to mind is the current focus on accessibility. I think from an objective financial/engineering perspective, it's much preferable to just ignore accessibility because it adds complexity and isn't used by the vast majority of users. However, providing access to everyone is the right thing to do.
Another example is crisis tools (https://crisisresponse.google/). I don't think we make money from these apps.
Of course, I'm sure people will say this is just for marketing or something but in the end, how can one get around that?
I don't think Google is flawless. Far from it! But it's a huge company with way too many products so it's only natural there will be bad decisions and good ones, just as there are bad people as well as good people.
> Look to Chrome mobile, the one that they can force ram down the throat of > 50% of mobile users. Chrome mobile doesn't have addons because it doesn't compete.
I'm not sure I understand.. are you saying that Chrome mobile takes up a lot of RAM? Because if so I would agree with that, but isn't that precisely why extensions shouldn't be allowed? Implementing extensions would add an even greater burden and poorly written extensions would provide a bad user experience.
If anything I really wish we could strip Chrome down. I think people adopted Chrome early on because it was really light and personally I really feel like we let everyone down by letting it get so bloated.